"More booty for Newtie!" The Plight of Callista Gingrich

THE VILLAGES, Fla.—"What do you want to be when you grow up?" Jim Laird is asking, unprompted. He's a Newt Gingrich supporter originally from Michigan, his tan face obscured by sunglasses and a baseball cap. A throng of senior citizens are crammed into Lake Sumter Landing, a parking lot adjacent to a Barnes & Noble and a Coldwater Creek.

"A reporter for GQ," I tell him. There are at least a thousand people here, and it's impossible to get anywhere near the stage, so I've camped out by the makeshift bar, next to Laird and two women toting Gingrich signs.

Laird is explaining that Romney's probably going to win here, and Herman Cain's not helping. "I don't know where Herman Cain was getting his support, it came as a surprise," he says. "That endorsement didn't even make a splash. It didn't even make a ripple."

Then he interrupts himself. "Wow, it smells like somebody's smoking dope!" he says. He wants to know if I've ever heard Callista Gingrich speak. "Does his wife ever say anything?" he asks. "Her face would crack, probably. With the sun down here, she's going to melt."

Gingrich's marital peccadilloes keep coming up here, more than in any other state I've been to. Callista seems to suffer the most from it. At a Romney event earlier this week, one woman said to me: "His wife is in every photo. You never see him without her. It's annoying to me!" Another said that Callista "shouldn't get to be first lady" because she broke up Gingrich's previous marriage. "I mean, can you imagine Callista as first lady?," said a third, scrunching her face. "Isn't that scary?"

Apparently it's not a sentiment exclusive to Romney voters. As I make my way through the pro-Gingrich crowd, away from Laird, I hear a heckler shouting: "Wooo! Newtie!!! More booty for Newtie!!!"

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